Saturday, March 31, 2012

In the last days of March two major workers
mass unrest were experienced by Gurgaon in four days. Gurgaon is sharply
developing as an industrial hub and we can see many multi-floor buildings, Shopping
Malls, Metro Train and long Highways, luxury office complexes of multinational
companies and few people are enjoying this progress with a comfortable
life. With this development it is becoming one of the Indian Metro cities,
which are now trying to stand in the rows of New York and London. This all
development is promoted as the "face of India", and many other
faces (which are not less than hell!) are made hidden behind it. So, now we return
to the Industrial development and unrest among workers in Gurgaon. On 19 and 23
March 2012, two major incidents took place in the Industrial and construction
sectors of Gurgaon.

One incident took place on 19 March, 2012 in a transport Industry
called Orient Craft in Sector 37 Gurgaon, where a contractor attacked
workers with a scissors and injured them. The tension arose when contractor
tried to abuse workers for not doing overtime on Sunday. After it, all workers
start protesting against the management to take action against the contractor.
But, management called the police force to control the workers. In place of
complaining against contractor management was protecting him, which fuel the
anger among workers and more than three thousand workers in a self-sustaining
manner start throwing stones at the company premises and burned jeep of police.
After this incident around 20 workers were arrested in multiple charges of "breaking
the law", and contractor was also arrested. But contractor was released
soon after the arrest with the help of Orient Craft management and joined the company
just next day. But, all arrested worker are still not released. (It is normal functioning
of "law and order"!)

Second incident took place, after
three days of Orient Craft incident, on 23rd March, 2012 in Sector 58 Gurgaon,
where a 25 year old worker Bakul Hassan (From Baghpat,
Uttar Pradesh) died after falling from
7th floor of under construction multi floor building of Ireo Grand Arch Luxury
Project. Contract of this project is given to construction companies L&T
Ltd. andAlufit Ltd, and construction of this
particular building was managed by Alufit Ltd. where 3500 contract workers
are hired for construction. Workers complaint
that management can save the life of their co-worker, but management did not arrange
any vehicle to hospital. They also informed that none of the safety measures
are provided by the contractor and this type of accidents also happened due
to tiredness of worker during long hours of inhuman working condition. Workers
told that that management was trying to hide the accident. Information of
incident reached to worker only when they see that management was taking the
body out of construction premises with the help of police. When workers tried
to get information about the incident and demanded the registration a FIR
against the contractor, the security guards clashed with them. After use of
force by security guards and police force angry workers burned the police jeep
and come on the street to protest. After this incident large police force
deployed at the construction site. All workers who were living in the slum
rooms near the site were brutally beaten and tortured by police force. On the
same day 23 workers were arrested and FIR was logged against other 200 workers.
According to a police official many innocent workers were also tortured and
arrested. After this brutal oppression all workers left the slum. Only after
this self-sustained anger of workers on the construction site this incident
of the death of a worker and working conditions of other construction workers
in Gurgaon were come into light. And reality comes in the front of a
section of population that is living a comfortable life in these buildings
where lives of many workers are buried. Otherwise many other deaths during
construction and inhuman treatment of the workers kept hidden from the eyes
of other sections of the society. It has proved with another death of a worker
in a under construction building in Badasahpur, Gurgaon, just next day on 24th
March, and this incident was completely hided.

In both of these incidents, many
workers were arrested. And, now these
arrested workers will be kept in the custody and then they will keep fighting
to prove their innocence in the front of Law and Labor Court. One question
arises here is that what was the reason behind these two incidents? Were these
incidents just an instantaneous reaction of the anger of workers, who came on
the streets, or some other reasons were responsible for the incident? Before
going further, first we see the condition of lakhs of workers in this area. Around
10,000 industries are present in the Gurgaon area, and most of them have no trade
unions of the workers. Most of these companies have permanent work that run
for whole year, but the workers are still hired through contractors. The same
condition also persists in the construction sector, except workers here are
frequently transferred from one site to another after completion of the
projects.Price of the life of these workers is not more than a machine
that is used in industries for production of profit. All workers are living
their life in the conditions, which are not better than hell. There are
many lounges where 500 to 600 workers live and five to six people share a
room of 10 X 10 feet. Most of these workers are youths who belong to Uttar
Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Odissa, Madhya Pradesh etc. and migrated here in
the search of work because neither they own any land nor they have any
property. They are Hindus as well as Muslims. After talking to the workers of
few companies in the different areas of the Gurgaon, some surprising facts of
open exploitation are exposed. According to the workers their contractor never
give salaries on time, it mostly don't pay over-time with double rate, no
holidays and leaves are allowed for the workers, if a worker left the work then
no remaining salary is paid to him, mostly workers are forced to work in the
double shifts for 12 to 19 hours seven days in a week with single rate over
time, many industries sometimes lock the factory premises and don't allow any
worker to leave while all work is not completed, workers are also not allowed any
leave even in the case of sickness(A horrible condition of indirect
forced labor! Who are producing luxury for others on the cost of their lives!).
Most of these workers are working on the salaries of around 3,000 to 5,000 per
month for 9 hours daily shift with 7 days a week. When they work in double
shift for 16 to 19 hours a day without any leave they are paid around 6000
to 9000 rupees for one month. In this type work conditions after working for
few years when these workers reach at the age of 35 to 45, all their health is
sucked for the profit of industries and they are left on the street for
survival. (It is great capitalist democratic system!!)

In this Industrial area of Gurgaon
most of the industries have no trade unions. So, industry managements and contractors do open exploitation of workers to
earn more profit. It is now exposed before all. And condition of lakhs of the unorganized
workers in Gurgaon is worsening every day. All these slavery like conditions of
workers and facts are not hidden from anyone, but still Prime Minister says
that labor laws are resisting the "development" of the nation (I
think we should define the term "nation" more clearly!), so more
liberalization is required in the laws for attracting more investment. In India
there are many nation level trade unions who claim that they are the
representatives of workers. But, all these trade unions are only limited to
few white-collared private and government workers, and keep doing some symbolic
rituals among these workers for hiding their betrayal. Recently a one day symbolic
national strike was organized by these trade unions, which was another chapter
of the same subject.

Now, if we return to the last two
incidents of workers unrest in factory workers and construction workers in
Gurgaon, we can clearly understand the reason behind it. Most of the workers in
this industrial area are unorganized and have no trade unions. In the absence
of organized unity and any other option, these workers cannot lead any self-sustained
protest for their extensive demands, and individually their demands are neither
heard by labor department and administrative officials nor by industrial
management and contractors. This self-sustaining anger of workers that was blasted
on the street is actually the result of accumulated anger of workers, which was
developing below the surface against daily exploitation. But, these types
of self-sustained protest only end with the arrest of few workers or forcibly
oppressed by company hired goons.

If we look at the industrial
development of Indian after liberalization and privatization reform of 1990,
there is a sharp increase in the number of migrant contractual workers in the
Industrial and Construction works. With these new policies all labor laws
were made flexible and open permission for the exploitation of workers was
given to contractors to attract the investors. According to the government
data of year 2004 there are total 45.9 crore workers in India, and 43.3 crore
are unorganized workers who have no rights to negotiate about their
rights to the industry managements or contractors because they have no
trade unions. After 8 years, now in 2012 this figure of unorganized workers
will have been raised to much higher numbers. Condition of all these unorganized workers is
not more than a forced laborer, who are enslaved by the whole capitalist
system, because they have to work at any cost to earn livelihood in order to stay alive.
All people, daily from morning to the evening, use a lot of
goods which are produced by these workers, but many of these people never
become aware of the conditions of workers who produce these goods. Few people who are living on the labor of
these worker, and who know it, they simply "enjoy" their misery and
selfishness and try to present a lot of foolish logic for hiding it from themselves.

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